How covid-19 is impacting on global marketing
Rajendra Zadpe
Digital marketing expenditures have significantly increased over the years. Despite reduced marketing budgets due to the spread of COVID-19, digital marketing channels will still dominate. Here is why…
Most brick-and-mortar events like fairs, flea markets, conferences, workshops and trade shows scheduled in the second quarter of 2020 have been canceled or will be virtual. Furthermore, future similar event plans this year are very much in limbo. With that, marketeers are seeking other venues to spend their marketing dollars. They need to continue to build their brands and generate the required leads and sales.
Additionally, consumers hunkered down at home to avoid contracting coronavirus are turning to online shopping for products that they traditionally bought in stores. This will provide online retailers better returns on their online ads, boosting online marketing expenditures.
Why Small Businesses Need a Digital Marketing Strategy—Especially During the Pandemic
The internet revolution that took place in the 90s has created many unicorn companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, ushering the way to online shopping, socializing and interacting. Interestingly, these are the companies that are suffering the least during the COVID-19 economic crisis. As a matter of fact, Amazon is even prospering during these difficult times with its stock AMZN reaching all-time highs! With over $600 billion of products and services sold online in the U.S. alone in 2019, no one can ignore the importance of digital channels.
Even if you are not selling your products online, you must consider digital marketing as a plausible scalable engine of growth for your company. This engine of growth is made of many cylinders, each representing a digital channel. Ideally, you want every channel to be fine-tuned with the others to deliver the most robust and efficient result for your business.
The purpose of your digital marketing strategy is to channel traffic to your website or social media pages, engage your target audience and convert them to leads and sales.
With metrics– and they are very abundant in the digital world– you can track all your steps, optimize them, streamline your processes and affect your key performance indicators (KPIs.)
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Advertising and Marketing
Many marketing and advertising departments will be up to the challenge: thinking through creative and innovative marketing strategies and practices that will navigate the business through this new normal. For brands, this means dealing with market alteration because of the economic impact on all industry sectors; facing increased competition given consumers' and social "new normal"; addressing sustainability; evaluating operational options and challenges presented by strategic planning in an environment of uncertainty; analyzing brand reputation issues; identifying potential new products and services needed to meet consumers' needs and expectations; focusing on creative and strategic marketing campaigns and targeted advertising; and using social media effectively.
These are made all the more important since, as a result of COVID-19, advertising spending is expected to decrease for some in 2020 as stores close and revenue decreases. For example, one online rental home booking company announced that it will suspend all marketing activities in 2020 in order to save hundreds of millions of dollars.4 Other businesses have refocused their spends to purpose-driven marketing, mission-based marketing and cause-related marketing to better satiate consumers' increased media consumption while working from home. For example, 45 percent of global consumers are devoting more time to social media, online video streaming has increased by 26 percent, online gaming traffic has increased exponentially on one telecommunication company's servers, and the number of consumers using online food delivery and essential goods delivery has risen dramatically.5
As a result, many brands may look to optimize their marketing practices to better reflect the increase in online transactions, communications and face time with consumers.